


we should've started a podcast instead

by chainsaw_cowboy



Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - 2000s, Alternate Universe - College/University, Assassination Attempt(s), Breaking and Entering, Cocaine, Dream runs for mayor, Drug Dealing, Drugs, Friends to Lovers, Gun Violence, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Mutual Pining, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Politics, Sketchy Mayoral Campaigns, Underage Drinking, dream and george's arc is heavily inspired by the politician, sex is mentioned but never shown, this town is entirely fake, two friends bond over selling coke
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-13 10:15:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29151843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chainsaw_cowboy/pseuds/chainsaw_cowboy
Summary: Karl Jacobs is a painfully average classics major living in a middle-of-nowhere college town, but his life's turned upside down when he is thrown down a rabbit hole of drugs and political intrigue. One bad party, now he is knee deep in cocaine and has been roped into helping his friend sell it to pay off his many, many debts. At the same party, Dream hatches a plan; an ambitious mayoral campaign promising him power within the town, and he wants to use it as ample opportunity to get closer to his friend's cute roommate George.Honestly- they should've just started a podcast.
Relationships: Antfrost/VelvetIsCake (Video Blogging RPF), Clay | Dream/GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF), Karl Jacobs/Sapnap
Kudos: 8





	we should've started a podcast instead

**Author's Note:**

> Here we go baby, first fanfic for this fanbase, I'm not much of a writer and mostly write out of boredom. I hope people actually enjoy my "What if Sapnap was a cocaine dealer?" idea that I decided to run with.

This is a story of youth. A story of messy love. A story of a drug dealer with a moral dilemma, a migraine riddled romantic, a pile of disposable cameras, a night of shitty car sex, a troublesome use of a tape recorder, a mayoral campaign, and a loaded gun. While these things may seem unrelated, they all soon fall together, like pages in a book.

Where does the idea of morality come from? Are humans born moral, do they emerge from the womb perfect examples of morally conscious? Is it scared into them? A question that has branded itself into the greymatter of every philosopher since Plato and Socrates, has also wormed its way into the brain of a classics major in Hillford, California. He lays down in the hammock he and his roommates set up in their living room, a rough cheap thing that would honestly make a better carpet than cradle. Light from the streetlamp towering over the house trickles into the wide living room window. 

To call that room a living room is a bit of a lie though. It was mostly a clutter of take-out, cans, and textbooks, perhaps, if tonight was his lucky night, he'd find one of Nick's spliffs forgotten by heavy hands between books, binders and bottles. Tonight, Karl will refrain from searching for any discarded pot, and instead try to focus on why he was languishing on this wretched hammock while his roommates partied. 

Morals. 

Every child's morals are an outcome of their parents', whether they like it or not, and Karl's roommates were not an exception. Nick was indeed his mother's son as he was soft spoken in what he'd consider proper company, but his confidence emerges as more than comparable to his close friends while in their intimate presence

George was his parents' child in the same way that all nine of his siblings were. His mother's wildfire and undeniably free-spirited personality and his father's inability to see malice as anything short of an opportunity to forgive was enough to drive him across the world to Hillford of all places. George was timid like his father and self-serving like his mother. Unfortunately, his father's ability to forgive must have skipped a generation, or perhaps just him.

Alex- or Big Q if you're asking the obnoxious, brash, and intrusive high school students that insist on studying in the university library, never spoke of his parents in the household's many nights of drunken board games and story spilling. He only spoke of their expectations of him. Two distant parents expecting a perfect son ended up receiving an anxious burnout with a nicotine addiction eager to impress anyone who’d watch. 

Karl himself wasn’t an exception to his own theories. Good natured, just like both of his parents, but in the end- poor. 

Everyone has a story about how they ended up in Hillford, Karl's story was one of necessity. It is also painfully boring and economically depressing. Karl thumbed the bandage on his left hand as he attempted to balance the book he was reading on his chest.   


Right, morals. Everyone has their own set, and his roommates caravanned off to some shitty party because of it. The issue is, Karl thinks the guy throwing the party; Clay- or "Dream" if you met him online or through some shoddy lifeblog that his friends had seemed to make acquaintance with him through, is a huge prick. 

"Come on, he's really cool, you guys just had a bad encounter!" Nick's reasoned with Karl as he poured himself his morning cup of coffee. 

"No, I'm not going- you don't touch a stranger like that." Karl murmured with contempt laced in his voice. Nick huffed and took a step closer to Karl, who turned his body away from his roommate. 

"Boo you dramatic little bitch, I didn't think Dream would absolutely body you during volleyball like that, but you can't blame him for breaking your rib and then talk about him like he slipped you a bit of MDMA and dragged you into a shady alley." Nick sighed, Karl continued to pour coffee. 

Nick, now offended, bent himself over the kitchen counter in an attempt to make eye contact with Karl. Karl continued to ignore him. 

"I want to stay home and do homework." 

"Bullshit." 

"Not bullshit, Dr. Keating gave us reading to do and I want to get it done." 

Nick rolled his eyes. "You've probably read the book he assigned at least twice over at this point- let me guess which stuffy asshole wrote it…." he rubbed his stubbly chin, "Voltaire." He guessed proudly. Karl kept pouring. 

"I'm not going Nick." 

"Stop!"

"I'm not going to stop insisting that I don't go." 

"Karl you idiot stop pouri-" 

Karl lets his left leg dangle off the side of the hammock. He closes his copy of "The White Bull" and shoves his bandaged hand in his pocket to find his keys. He's going to go to that fucking party. He fishes his keys out of his pocket and throws himself off of the hammock, letting his body fall to the floor with a light 'thump.' Highlighters, capped and uncapped spill all over the floor, some falling on his face and torso. Keys in hand, he stands up, and stumbles out of the door and into his front yard of dewy grass. He piles into his 2001 Ford Taurus, untrimmed fingernails scratching at the peeling silver paint of the door, and drives off.

* * *

Pulling up two hours late to a college party in Hillford was not a matter of etiquette, it was a matter of parking. Slowly turning across the streets and streets of parked cars near Dream's house was giving Karl a headache. 

"Why can't I just park in the middle of the street, what's stopping me at this point?"

Abandoned Ford Taurus in the middle of the road, drunk driver or nearsighted old woman, fast driving, crash, fire, explosion, no more car for Karl. 

And the whole dead driver thing. 

"Oh yeah that's why…" Karl sighed and pressed his head on the steering wheel. A dull prolonged honk rings out from the squat car. The sound of the horn, the noise of the party from a block down, Karl's conversation with Nick from that morning playing in his head over and over again like some sadistic god was forcing the record player in his brain to repeat it until he could remember every goddamn word leading up to Karl spilling scalding hot coffee over his tender wrist and palm, it hurt. It made his head hurt. Hurt in the same way your lips hurt after picking at the chapped skin, punishment for not having anything besides your fingers and tongue to soothe the burning pain on your mouth. Hurt like getting a charlie horse in bed after stretching and begging your body to just dull the pain, but to no avail. 

Through guilty thoughts and headaches, Karl neglected the wheel, his hands committed to one unyielding spot, and unwilling to cooperate with the slightly curved street. Frankly, Karl didn't even notice his car was drifting closer and closer to the curb until the streets, once filled with cars, had turned empty and he sound of tires pressed against the curb and the grating alarm of bumper plastic scratching against concrete brought Karl out of his headache induced daydreams. Until it brought him back to the real world. 

"Oh shit!" Karl screams and slams on the brakes, the abrupt stop thrusting his body against his seat belt. "Holy fuck! I-" he groans and throws his car into reverse to proper pull into the parking spot. The uneasy spinning of wheels felt like walking on eggshells. He managed. Getting out of his car, he walks out in front of the car and examines the bumper: scratched to shit. 

"That looks pretty bad, man." The voice came from behind him. 

"Ah!" Karl shrieked in a girlish fashion and jumped forward, attempting to make his escape from the sound. He turns around and his eyes meet the breast pocket of a Hawaiian shirt. One of those shitty button-up ones you can buy for a dime a dozen at the local Goodwill or Salvation Army, more likely than not, donated by a middle aged man abandoning his latest identity crisis. 

Inside the shirt was a scrawny, but incredibly tall person, he wore a surgical mask- the kind you wore when you got sick or worked in the yard all day, and you'd just hope that the PPE kept the fumes from the lawnmower out of your lungs, and kept the kicked up silt away from your nose and mouth. 

"Oh, er- I'm sorry I just noticed you driving funny and well-" 

_ "His voice is really deep."  _ Karl thought. 

He messes with the collar of his shirt, "y'know we just didn't want you drunk driving and- I don't know…" He fiddled with his hands.

"I'm not drunk, why are you talking to me?" Karl's face scrunched up as he locked his car, keeping an eye on the man.

"Right… because that's what a sober person says." Karl scoffed at the comment and shoves his hands into the pockets of his sweatpants. 

"Shit- no, look," Karl takes his left hand out of his pockets and rubs his temples. He looks down at the floor, noticing the stranger's shoes, converse, beat to absolute shit. "I skipped out on his party and it's been giving me a headache, I don’t know why but my buddy Nick is pretty pissed I didn't go. He said I'd regret not going, and I don't want him to be right." 

"Uhh look man, are you drunk or not…?" He asks, looking down at the scuffed car bumper. Karl shakes his head. 

"Not drunk, just a migraine, now I'm going to leave." Karl spun on his heel and started to walk away. The bag of bones waved as he adamantly walked off.

"Uh… thank you sir… for not… drunk driving…?" 

"You're welcome!" Karl yelled back. 

"Sir there's uh- nevermind." Karl didn't care enough to follow up on his comment. 

Karl made quick work of the next three blocks. "The White Bull" and his short response essay could wait a few hours of partying and a hangover, he was a good student, but he knew how to live, right? The house was one of the bigger ones on the block, it used to belong to the fraternity that dominated the college. It got disbanded five years ago after a massive drug scandal, Clay started renting out the place with five or six of his friends this semester. He was the reason why Nick and George moved out to Hillford in the first place. 

He could hear the river to his left rushing it was a calming sound underneath the head-splitting volume of the music from down the street. The street ‘Dream’ lived on was right along the coastline, but between the road and the coast was a thin neck of woods and Hafferty River. The river was well known in Hillford for running from Haggard’s Lake down to the beach, but it’s most infamous as a drinking spot for teenagers. The woods make for a great hiding spot for alcohol, the river a great dumping spot. Karl was yet to use it. 

The recent semester living with Nick, George, and Big Q, the nickname had stuck, rarely had conflict, but recently Karl was noticing that they were spending less and less time at their house and more time at his. He felt the music through the ground now, the beat reverberating in the soles of his shoes. Karl looks to his left. 

"Oh fuck I'm here," He looks up at the house, the top floor of the building seemed to be the center of commotion. Karl weighs his options. In his left pocket was his phone, he could take it out and ring up Alex or George or even Nick, or he could just walk in. 

If he calls Alex, he'll most definitely pick up, but he will immediately start making fun of Karl. He can hear his holler of a laugh in his ears already and the, "Nick fuckin' told you's," through the speaker. 

George never answers his phone, either choosing to ignore it or making some excuse. He was prone to leaving the Blackberry at home, either as a way to avoid being told off for never answering or using the opportunity to bring a camera instead.

Then there was Nick, no matter what, he picked up the phone with little hesitation and gave Karl a warm introduction of “hey, hey, and howdy.”

Karl wasn’t sure if he’d be happy with him, and he wasn’t prepared for the chance to not hear it. 

Karl opts to just walk in.

He pushes through the front doors with enough confidence to say he was invited. Nobody acknowledges his arrival, the world keeps spinning. 

_ "I feel small."  _

"You decided to come?" Karl recognized the voice, the higher pitch, the amusement laced in his words. 

"Alex! Dude, yeah- I decided to show.” Karl mumbled careful not to look him in the eyes, hiding his face in his jacket. 

“Well, Sap is upstairs if you're looking to suck his cock and apologize, ahahaha" Alex's voice trails off as he steps further and further away from Karl. 

Karl brushed off the comment, that was Big Q for you, the party pleaser, he never changed. Right, Sap. Sapnap was the name he used for him when they weren't at odds- which was most of the time, today was just an off day: an exception. He makes a beeline for the staircase riddled with partiers, fetching the occasional stare as he takes quick small steps up to the second floor. It's to be expected, he wasn't the type to show his face at a party. He stumbled, anxiety stepping into his shoes and throwing him off of his equilibrium. Balance was not Karl's forte. 

"That seems like enough…" He could hear Nick's voice from down the hall. Karl walked towards the sound, it was calling him through the haze of cigarette smoke and noise. 

"Thanks Sap," the other voice emerged clearly in a sea of voices and sounds, "everyone else shorts me in this fuckin' town." He sounds angry. Karl approaches the door the voices are echoing from and opens it. 

Now, if Karl had the chance to mentally prepare himself- he would've, but he just wanted the migraine to go away. If he knew that what happened behind that door would change the course of his life forever, he would have simply waited for it to fade, but in chasing temporary relief, Karl introduced himself to a headache that might as well be life-long.

Nick was in the room with another man, a scruffy fellow in a hat and a crumpled graphic tee for a band nobody has ever heard of, in his hand was a tiny little baggie. Nick held what he could approximate to be a little over one hundred dollars in crumpled twenties. Nick and the man turn their heads and stare. Deers about to be hit by a semi-truck.

"Oh, hey Karl," Nick manages to croak out after a heavy moment of silence, "You decided to come to the party?" 

Karl's eyes rush to the baggie in the other's hand. He was about to really regret coming to the party.

"Nick are you selling fucking cocaine?"

**Author's Note:**

> That's that, more of a setup chapter than anything, this might be one of my longer chapters, but who knows. I really hope to finish this before my creativity juices run out lol. Each chapter is named after a line for a song, brownie points to whoever figures it out! (i'll reveal it next chapter)


End file.
